


outside these walls

by unmedicated_daydreams



Category: House M.D.
Genre: Drug Use, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, M/M, Past Abuse, Sex, Slash
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-12-28
Updated: 2018-12-28
Packaged: 2019-09-29 09:49:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,005
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17201252
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/unmedicated_daydreams/pseuds/unmedicated_daydreams
Summary: Within the walls of his childhood home, nothing can save him.  But House is no longer confined by those walls, no matter how much he feels them pressing in.  The only walls trapping him now are the ones he built— but those who love him are working hard to tear them down.(And yes, I know, I’m like five years late to this party.)





	outside these walls

**Author's Note:**

> Content Warning— child abuse, PTSD flashbacks, graphic physical, emotional, and sexual abuse in later chapters
> 
> I hope the five remaining House fans who still stalk these tags enjoy ;)

flashback//:  
He was on the ground, hands braced against the unsteady soul of his mother’s vegetable garden. His hands stained red by tomatoes he had stumbled into, he could not convince himself of his position as the victim. He invited this, didn’t he?

Didn’t he?

He could no longer tell what was sweat and what was tears, what was pain and what was numbness. It no longer mattered. He was cold; it was a thorough cold, so different from the kind he felt when he slept under the stars in the winter’s chilled embrace. This cold ran deeper, so deep it had become part of him. His vision blurred.

“Tell me again,” said his father in that sickly sweet tone, “What is wrong with you?” He could not feel the following kick, just the fall, the sensation of air leaving him as his face buried into the dirt as though his body were seeking its grave.

A hacking cough escaped him as he struggled for breath. His father’s hands fisted his hair and dragged him from the ground, baring his throat to the darkness. The man’s lips— lips he knew far too well— brushed against the lobe of his left ear. “Tell me what is wrong with you.”

He flailed for just a flash of a moment before retreating into the safe embrace of his shortcomings and sins. “I... I am weak. I am childish.” The grip loosened just enough that breath no longer eluded him. His father’s caress felt like a naked blade on his throat. “I am a spineless coward. I am stupid. I am... I am a burden to my family. I am useless and pathetic. I do not deserve to exist. I ask— no, I beg— for your forgiveness, Father.”

An oily grin swept across his father’s face. “On your knees, Gregory.”  
://flashback

 

“House is acting... strange.” The words tumbled hesitantly from Cameron’s mouth. “Stranger than usual.”

Wilson restrained his heavy sigh. “Whatever he’s done now, I don’t want to hear about it.”

Cameron steppes further into his office, revealing the discomfited faces of Chase and Foreman.

The sigh escaped him. “I’m not going to want to hear this, am I?”

Again, Cameron served as the group’s spokesperson. “He asked me how I was feeling.” Weird, but not entirely— “And then he followed it up by saying that he hoped I was having a good day.” Wilson looked up from his paperwork.

Chase stepped forward. “I was the first in today because he called me in at four in the bloody morning. He said he liked my hair. No insults, no comments on my masculinity or lack thereof, no gay jokes, nothing. Then he offered me a doughnut and said he was sorry he’d made me come in so early.”

Wilson arched a brow in Foreman’s direction. “Did he buy you a coffee or something.”

Foreman blushed. “Hot cocoa. No mention of my race.”

“Was it spiked with ecstasy?” With Foreman, one never could tell...

“No, just sugar.”

Curiosity taking him over, he rose from his comfortable chair. “Thanks for letting me know, but it’s nothing. House is in a rare good mood. Enjoy it.” His heart racing, he left the three fellows alone in his office. Something was awry, and he intended to get to the bottom of it.

 

House sits in his chair, cane leaned against his desk, bouncing that ball of his in deep thought. For all the man’s faults, he is a genius.

Then his friend looks up at him.

It’s an expression he’s never seen before. The pain, he expects, but the hurt... House isn’t the sort of person to let other people get to him. He certainly isn’t the sort to cry in his glass-walled office, but nonetheless, his eyes are red and his cheeks glistening.

Still, it’s entirely possible that he’s over-reacting. House schools his expression so immediately that he finds himself wondering if the red eyes are merely a symptom of it being allergy season.

“It’s noon, Wilson. How about lunch?” The tone is normal. House is, well, as normal as someone like House can be.

So he heads down to the cafeteria and ignores the feeling that something about this is... off.

House selects a reuben and a bag of chips. Wilson allows a small smile to show through. For once, he was wrong about something being wrong with House. He grabs a simple sandwich and moves to pay.

When House’s hand covers his as he hands the cashier his card, he doesn’t know what to make of it. “I’ve got this, Jimmy,” he says, and Wilson is paralyzed. The cashier accepts House’s twenty-dollar bill, and he’s so shocked that House has to guide him away from the register to their usual table.

He forces his jaw to close. House seems entirely unaware of his condition as he bites into his reuben.

“House?”

His friend pauses. “Yeah?”

He takes a moment to prepare for House’s reaction, expecting his friend to insult him, steal his food, mock him for caring, and then psychoanalyze him until he swears he’ll never again ask House a sincere question. “Is something wrong?”

House pales. “No.”

And that’s the end of it.

 

Wilson knows. House pours another shot of whiskey into his glass, pausing to massage his ever-aching leg before starting in on a state of drunkenness. Wilson knows, and Wilson will never let it go.

House is a private man, one who rigorously and religiously avoids all questions pertaining to his painful past life in the grip of his father. He lived through that hell once, and to spend the rest of his life living in those memories would be no better. He hasn’t dealt with the trauma, merely re-packaged it in a cardboard box labeled “Keep Out.” And to him, this is enough.

But if Wilson knows, and House strongly suspects that he does, Wilson will want to talk about it. He sips the last sip, lets it slide down his throat.

Tomorrow his parents arrive.


End file.
